Seeing Red at the Movies Presents:
A Sacred Rage:
The Angry Woman as the Transformative Feminine in Film and Cinema
"But even where the transformative character of the Feminine appears as a negative, hostile, and provocative element, it compels tension, change, and an intensification of the personality."
-Eric Neumann, The Great Mother
Before receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel was asked why God would allow the Holocaust. He said, "I have not answered that question, but I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason."* In the face of profound injustice, anger and protest may be the most sacred response. This is a creative understanding of anger, not in the sense of fueling violence and aggression, but anger that keeps us human and humane. This is anger rooted in the soil of compassion, empathy, and hope. While there is a culturally accepted template for a masculine expression of rage and anger in order to effect change and transformation, the archetypal angry woman is more often than not transmogrified (Medusa) and exiled.
Yet there is an archetypal reality of the angry feminine as a catalyst for healthy transformation. This is an archetypal identity that is illustrated in the earliest known writings of civilization. We meet her as a Goddess in the figure of Inanna. She is the transformative feminine that Erich Neumann describes when he writes:
"But even where the transformative character of the Feminine appears as a negative, hostile, and provocative element, it compels tension, change, and an intensification of the personality. In this way, an extreme exertion of the ego is provoked and its capacity for creative transformation is directly and indirectly 'stimulated.'"
This is the Salome that Jung struggles to accept in the Red Book. When this transformative feminine appears, whether in our psyche or in culture, the initial reaction is usually to reject or exile her. She ushers in a sense of extreme danger that the psyche instinctively resists. She seems dangerous because she challenges the status quo of both our psychic and cultural orientation. Her appearance whether in our dreams, our creative processes or in the outer world, usually heralds the disruption, destruction and chaos that is the beginning of profound transformation. This transformative feminine is not the assassin that Jung accuses Salome of being, rather she is the guide for creative transformation that is a necessary part of the individuation process.
Contemporary cinema often shows us only one aspect of the archetypal angry woman. From the classic Evil Queen in Snow White, to Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, we are given a dark feminine bent on destruction and annihilation either literally or psychologically. These are characters caught in the blind rage of an archetypal possession. Most of them illustrate more a projection of an unconscious fear of the feminine, which manifests as the transmogrified feminine.
Yet, there is another facet of the archetypal angry feminine that illustrates a differentiated anger that fuels the creative energy and stamina needed to effect deep transformation. Films like Erin Brokevich, Silkwood and more recently, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, show us women who channel their rage and men who work alongside them, in order to protest and overthrow systems of injustice. The documentary, Pray to the Devil Back to Hell, featuring the leadership of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Leymah Gbowee shows us an incredible example of the power of this archetypal feminine anger to effect cultural transformation.
This Seeing Red series will explore the cultural portrayals we find in cinema relative to angry women and to illuminate the archetypal reality of the angry feminine not as a deranged villainess, but as one aspect of the transformative feminine that Neumann describes, who appears in our psyche and in culture, in order to move us forward in the sacred process of becoming whole.
*Joseph Berger, “Man in the News: Witness to Evil; Eliezer Wiesel,” The New York Times, October 15, 1986.
Yet there is an archetypal reality of the angry feminine as a catalyst for healthy transformation. This is an archetypal identity that is illustrated in the earliest known writings of civilization. We meet her as a Goddess in the figure of Inanna. She is the transformative feminine that Erich Neumann describes when he writes:
"But even where the transformative character of the Feminine appears as a negative, hostile, and provocative element, it compels tension, change, and an intensification of the personality. In this way, an extreme exertion of the ego is provoked and its capacity for creative transformation is directly and indirectly 'stimulated.'"
This is the Salome that Jung struggles to accept in the Red Book. When this transformative feminine appears, whether in our psyche or in culture, the initial reaction is usually to reject or exile her. She ushers in a sense of extreme danger that the psyche instinctively resists. She seems dangerous because she challenges the status quo of both our psychic and cultural orientation. Her appearance whether in our dreams, our creative processes or in the outer world, usually heralds the disruption, destruction and chaos that is the beginning of profound transformation. This transformative feminine is not the assassin that Jung accuses Salome of being, rather she is the guide for creative transformation that is a necessary part of the individuation process.
Contemporary cinema often shows us only one aspect of the archetypal angry woman. From the classic Evil Queen in Snow White, to Joan Crawford in Mommie Dearest and Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, we are given a dark feminine bent on destruction and annihilation either literally or psychologically. These are characters caught in the blind rage of an archetypal possession. Most of them illustrate more a projection of an unconscious fear of the feminine, which manifests as the transmogrified feminine.
Yet, there is another facet of the archetypal angry feminine that illustrates a differentiated anger that fuels the creative energy and stamina needed to effect deep transformation. Films like Erin Brokevich, Silkwood and more recently, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, show us women who channel their rage and men who work alongside them, in order to protest and overthrow systems of injustice. The documentary, Pray to the Devil Back to Hell, featuring the leadership of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Leymah Gbowee shows us an incredible example of the power of this archetypal feminine anger to effect cultural transformation.
This Seeing Red series will explore the cultural portrayals we find in cinema relative to angry women and to illuminate the archetypal reality of the angry feminine not as a deranged villainess, but as one aspect of the transformative feminine that Neumann describes, who appears in our psyche and in culture, in order to move us forward in the sacred process of becoming whole.
*Joseph Berger, “Man in the News: Witness to Evil; Eliezer Wiesel,” The New York Times, October 15, 1986.
Wednesday Evenings from 8:00 - 9:30 PM EST.
Each webinar session will feature a 60 minute presentation focused on an archetypal analysis of the film, followed by 30 minutes of discussion with the Seeing Red Faculty presenter.
All of the webinar presentations will be recorded so you can access them at your convenience.
Special Note:
You will need to have watched the movie before the webinar presentation.
You can purchase the entire series for just $69
Each of the webinars will be recorded, so you can watch them at your convenience.
Register easily over the phone:
(860) 415-5004
or
Click the button below to register via e-mail with your card on file
Each webinar session will feature a 60 minute presentation focused on an archetypal analysis of the film, followed by 30 minutes of discussion with the Seeing Red Faculty presenter.
All of the webinar presentations will be recorded so you can access them at your convenience.
Special Note:
You will need to have watched the movie before the webinar presentation.
You can purchase the entire series for just $69
Each of the webinars will be recorded, so you can watch them at your convenience.
Register easily over the phone:
(860) 415-5004
or
Click the button below to register via e-mail with your card on file
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